Five Rules for Audio and Life

Over the past few weeks, I've designed, re-designed, integrated, and tuned a few audio system projects, and I've been reminded of a few things. Most of these maxims seem applicable outside our narrow field of car audio.

1. This end-to-end process has a lot of steps, but none of them are that difficult. It's not that difficult to tune a damned car.?The sequence is most important.?When playing 8-ball, you want to sink all the balls, and it may not matter which ball you sink first - but it's really important that you sink the 8-ball?last. Audio tuning is like that. I think it's easier to explain tuning a car properly than it is to explain baseball to someone who knows nothing about the game of baseball.

2. Things get a lot simpler when the superstition is removed.?Superstition removal is an ongoing process, which I'm guessing concludes when we die.?If you haven't started yet, it's time. Every one of us has learned more audio superstition than we realize, and it might feel like "wisdom", but it's superstition.?

3. There's work just before experiencing a great result - hearing a great system, in our field - and just after. These two stages should be worked on in two entirely different ways. The work just before, we do in our heads - we are all about the tasks. At the moment we hear great music, played back well, we get to get out of our heads and get to be in the moment. (That's why you don't listen to it until it's ready, dammit.) I think this is why many people resist learning audio - not because they aren't smart, but because there is an in-the-moment Zen to making things with our hands, and using a computer and software to work with invisible air wiggling seems to be the antithesis of craft to many of us. I don't agree - it's a poor worker who blames the tools, and with the advent of 3D printing and laser CNCs, many of you who have made beautiful things with your hands have learned over the past 5 years to make beautiful things in software... this is like that. My dad taught me the Zen of digging ditches, even though he didn't know what Zen was.?Learn to use tools to find beauty, even if the tools are computers.

4. If you choose a standard and adhere to it, things get a lot simpler, and far fewer choices have to be made in the course of a typical day.?If you constantly have to decide what your standard is, you don't have one.?

5. My daughter plays soccer, and my wife knows 2 million things more about soccer than I ever will. (She was on 3 teams when we met.) I have given my daughter very little coaching, but I did tell her this: When you are on the field, there are two things you need to be doing at every moment.?First, you need to know where you should be. Second, you should be moving there.?If you are spending your energy and attention being mad about a moment ago, when you weren't where you were supposed to be, you are not spending that energy and attention on getting where you should be?now. The car that pulls in may not be the car we expected, or operate in the way we expected. The OEM audio package may not be the one we expected. The gear may not arrive on time, or may not work as expected, or may not work in this car at all. Most people will not care as much about the planning and preparation you have done, or the commitments that you have made, as you care. All of these things are tremendously frustrating,?and they are all going to happen no matter what we feel about them. None of them have anything to do with the question,?"What is the right thing to be doing?now?"

Pic for reach (1/24th-octave measurement, 5-mic spatial averaged, using our bit Tune measurement rig).